Search Month: June 2007 Search News, In Review

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Jul. 2, 2007 at 1:58pm Eastern by Danny Sullivan

Search Month: June 2007 Search News, In Review

Search Month is a monthly newsletter that recaps stories covered on Search Engine Land over the past month. It's also available by feed here. Below, news about Search Engine Land itself, then our 10 most popular stories from June 2007, then a major story for various search topics along with other stories related to those topics since our last monthly newsletter through today.

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Search Engine Land News
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In House: New Column From Search Engine Land covers our newest Search Engine Land column, "In House." The new column takes an insider's look at the life of search marketers who work for large or multi-national organizations. Columnists write about technical challenges as well as the cultural, organizational, budgeting and other issues that arise while working within a large company.

Did you missed Search Engine Land's first Search Marketing Expo event last month? The Big SMX Advanced 2007 Wrap-Up will fill you in on everything that went on. Remember, we have a range of other shows coming up soon, with SMX Local & Mobile next up this October 1 & 2 in Denver, and a full list of our other events can be found at the SMX web site.

As part of our local/mobile show, we're doing a reader survey on local and mobile issues. Local & Mobile Search: We Want Your Input! explains this more. Please give us three minutes to share your input! Plus, you get a chance to win a ticket to the SMX Local & Mobile show!

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Top 10 Most Popular Stories: June 2007
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Ask Relaunches: Now "Ask 3D" - Ask.com is touting the release of "Ask3D" as a "major leap forward" for search. A bold three-panel interface (taken from the experimental Ask X) integrates more multimedia content, including images, videos, music files, as well as more structured text-based content. It also offers a battery of impressive features – new and existing – to bring more context and help to search results.

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Google Bad On Privacy? Maybe It's Privacy International's Report That Sucks - It's a bad privacy day for Google, with Privacy International first accusing the company of having the worst privacy performance of any internet service company in a study it has just released and then accusing Google of conducting a smear campaign against it. But if you actually read the report, Privacy International itself comes off bad for putting out a haphazard condemnation of Google.

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Google Launches "Street View" Photography - A new feature at Google allows you to see street-level photography tied to maps. (NOTE: This ran on May 29 but proved so popular in June that we're including it in the June popular stories round-up).

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Chinese Eye Tracking Study: Baidu Vs Google - I thought the easiest way to share the results of the Chinese Eye Tracking study might be in a Q&A format, as that’s what most research programs tend to be anyway. I’ll cover off some of the highlight findings in this column.

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Google Street View Raises Privacy Questions: Amusing To Some, Upsetting To Others - Privacy is back – or at least the issue is back. A range events, announcements and investigations over the past several months have put privacy back in the headlines. And today the links are coming in showing funny, revealing or potentially embarrassing photos of people on Google's new Street View photography. (NOTE: This ran on May 31 but proved so popular in June that we're including it in the June popular stories round-up).

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SEO "Don'ts": 20 Fatal Mistakes You Must Avoid To Succeed - The idea for this column came from a small business blog, where one small business owner asked for a quick and easy SEO checklist to follow. In other words, a concise list of do's and don'ts for search engine optimization. Well, how about going one better than that? How about two checklists? This week, a checklist of don'ts: things to avoid whether you're doing SEO yourself or having an outside firm do it for you.

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Searcharazzi: Let the Layoffs Begin - Listen up, HR managers, there’s a fresh crop of search employees on the block. iCrossing commenced a round of layoffs this week.

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Google Updates & Details Webmaster Guidelines - Google has just updated their Google Webmaster guidelines page with clearer and more detailed guidelines.

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21 Essential SEO Tips & Techniques - Last week, I shared 20 "don'ts" of search marketing for small businesses. Naturally, this week addresses the "Do's"—things to make sure you include whether you're hiring an SEO company or doing it yourself.

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eBay Pulls Google AdWords Ads To Protest Google Checkout Moves - This week, eBay Live is happening in Boston, but the event is likely to be overshadowed by a fascinating and fast-developing controversy between the auction giant and Google. Rumors from ComparisonEngines.com and other sources last night and earlier today reported that eBay had pulled its ads off Google to protest a planned party (now cancelled) to promote Google Checkout, called "Let Freedom Ring," that was to coincide with eBay Live.

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AOL
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AOL Relaunches Video Portal - AOL is busy upgrading and relaunching a range of features and sites on its network. The latest on the list to get a revamp is the video portal. See also:

AOL's Truveo Builds Video Search Network With 40 Million Users

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Ask.com
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Mossberg, Ask.com "Goes Much Further" Than Google - Walt Mossberg of the Wall Street Journal reviews Ask.com's new 3D look. Mossberg gave Ask.com great reviews, comparing Ask.com's three-pane approach to Google's Universal Search approach. See also:

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B2B
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B2B Search Marketing: Is SEO Or PPC Most Effective? - When it comes to B2B search marketing, what's the best strategy—Organic search engine optimization or pay-per-click search advertising? In large part, it depends on what you're selling, your budget, your company's investment philosophy, and searchers' actual behavior. See also:

Dating Tips For B2B Marketers

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Business & Revenues
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Antitrust Reviews For Microsoft's aQuantive & Yahoo's Right Media Deals - Both Microsoft and Yahoo will be undergoing antitrust reviews. The Federal Trade Commission will be reviewing the $6 billion bid by Microsoft to buy aQuantive and the $680 million bid by Yahoo to buy Right Media. Google is already under antitrust review by the FTC over the DoubleClick deal. See also:

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Conversion
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Stepping Stones Of User Conversions: A Step-By-Step Guide - Let's face it, in a world where almost every conceivable metric of analyzing your website traffic is available to you, the only metric that really truly matters is conversions. Click through rates, page views, time spent on site, number of pages read, entrance and exit points, abandonment; all of these metrics are fantastic, but if you're not using them to improve your conversion rates, well then, you're simply not using them. See also:

How To Test A Home Page For Conversion Effectiveness

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Google: AdSense
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Google AdSense Adds Corner Styles Format - The Inside AdSense Blog announced that they have added corner styles as a method of customizing your AdSense ads. Corner styles currently come in three styles, the default square, slightly rounded, and rounded corners. See also:

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Google: AdWords
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Google AdWords Adds Placement Performance Reports Showing Content Network Data To Advertisers - Google, as expected, has added a new report type to give AdWords advertisers the ability to see the exact sites their ads are displaying on within Google's content network. See also:

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Google: Acquisitions
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Google Acquires Zenter, Online Presentation Software Company - Google has announced that they have acquired Zenter, an online presentation software company. The acquisition will enable them to add presentation software to their Google Docs & Spreadsheets offering. See also:

Report: Google Acquires GrandCentral, Telephone Management Company

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Google: Business Issues
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Google Press Day 2007 Q&A With CEO Eric Schmidt - As part of Google International Press Day, Google CEO Eric Schmidt is doing Q&A with journalists. Here's a live blogging highlight of what was said, which covered a range of issues from privacy, censorship, whether Google is too big and scary and more. See also:

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Google: eBay Fight
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eBay Restarts AdWords Campaigns With New Outlook - eBay has resumed advertising through AdWords on Google but on a more limited basis than in the past. See also:

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Google: Employees
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Is Google Losing Its Magic For Employees? - Today's Wall Street Journal featured an article entitled "Start-Ups Make Inroads With Google's Work Force," which focused on emerging potential retention problems at Google. See also:

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Google: Maps & Mobile
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Google Customizes Map Directions - Not long ago Google introduced an "avoid highways" checkbox on Maps that provides alternative routing. Now Google has gone much further in that direction (so to speak), allowing users to drag icons on the map to create customized routing. See also:

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Google: Marketing
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Google, "Sicko" Opinions & Issues With Playing Ad Agency - A pitch on an official Google blog to get the healthcare industry to spend money on positive advertising in reaction to Michael Moore's documentary Sicko raised more than a few eyebrows today. A follow-up post with the author asking people not to take her opinion as Google's own doesn't solve the bigger issue -- Google might be getting too tight with its advertisers, these days. See also:

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Google: Legal Issues
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Lawsuit: Google's AdSense For Domains Program Contributes To Trademark Infringement - Eric Goldman covers a new lawsuit in which Google is being sued for allegedly violating trademarks by helping domainers monetize "typosquatter" domains. See also:

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Google: News Search
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New "Google News Image Version" Of Google News - Google News has added a link to the left bar that enables you to view an image version of Google News. See also:

Google Adds News Blog & Finance Blog

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Google: SEO Issues
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Google Webmaster Tools Adds Paid Link Reporting Form & More - The Google Webmaster Central blog announced the addition of a few new features to Webmaster Central Tools. The main feature is a new form where you can report paid links that you find on various sites. This feature was discussed at the Search Marketing Expo conference and provides a more formal way of reporting paid links than the another method Google's Matt Cutts suggested in April. See also:

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Google: Searching
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Google's Human Touch - "The Human Touch That May Loosen Google’s Grip" from the New York Times questions whether Google's use of algorithms and computers to compile search results might lead to its demise in the future. See also:

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Google: Video & YouTube
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YouTube Gains Country-Specific Sites, New Partnerships - YouTube, until now a single site serving a worldwide audience, now has gained country-specific versions for Brazil, France, Ireland, Italy, Japan, The Netherlands, Poland, Spain and the United Kingdom. See also:

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Google: Other Products
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Google Gadget Ventures: Get Paid To Develop Google Gadgets - How do you help encourage the growth of a widgets or gadgets ecosystem? Being big is a good, natural start. It has helped people flock to develop Facebook applications or Yahoo Widgets or Google Gadgets, just for exposure to the traffic at these places. But Google wants to encourage with more than traffic. Now it's offering cold hard cash. Google Gadget Ventures is a new pilot program that will pay developers either $5,000 or $100,000 to create Google Gadgets that prove popular with users. See also:

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In House
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When To Bring Search Marketing In-House - As with many other areas of the business, the decision to 'make or buy' applies to the search engine marketing function. Whether you decide to go with an outside agency, or develop and train a dedicated in-house team depends on whether search is considered a core component of your business. See also:

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Link Building
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Five Things I Hate About Linking - It's summer. Hot, humid, sticky and itchy. The perfect time to rant. Especially if you are a link seeking content publicist glued to a monitor while all your clients have gone on vacation. So here are five things I hate about linking, and I have more if you want them. See also:

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Local Search & Maps
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Domaining & Subdomaining In The Local Space, Part 2 - In the earlier installment of this article I covered the topic of local-oriented subdomaining. In this second installment, I'm covering domaining. As you may recall, I described "domaining" as the practice of buying domains mainly for their potential keyword value. Speculators purchase keyword domains with a view towards reselling those properties at a considerable markup, or to get revenue by "parking" the domains with minimal content and lots of ads. The "local space" version of domaining is where a domainer has set up shop on a name which includes some sort of locality parameter like a ZIP code, city name, or regional name. How beneficial is this, and is it valuable for generating revenue? See also:

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Microsoft: adCenter
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adCenter To Opt-In More Advertisers Into Content Network On June 28 - Microsoft adCenter will be opting-in more of their advertisers into the adCenter content network called Content Ads. Advertisers who are selected will be automatically included and be billed for clicks on ads within Microsoft's contextual program. This is set to go live on June 28th. If you do not want this, please use this form to inform Microsoft that you want to opt-out. You have until June 26th to place your request.

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Microsoft: Business Issues
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Microsoft To Change Desktop Search In Vista Over Google Antitrust Claim - Microsoft has agreed to make changes to their Vista desktop search application to make it easier for people to change the default search provider. Microsoft will make the changes in reaction to a Google antitrust complaint lodged with the US Justice Department. See also:

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Microsoft: Maps & Local
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Microsoft Virtual Earth Enhances UK 3-D; EveryScape Seeks To Make 3-D Better, Cheaper - Microsoft announced that it's enhancing Virtual Earth in the UK with improved 3-D elevation data from Intermap Technologies. These improvements will make their way throughout Western Europe and to the U.S. The idea is to use better terrain and elevation data to provide a more photorealistic 3-D experience overall. Meanwhile EveryScape says it has found a cheaper, more scalable way to build 3-D environments. See also:

Microsoft Launches New & Improved MSN Mobile

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Mobile Search
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Survey: Mobile Users Most Receptive To Paid-Search Ads - An Ingenio sponsored survey conducted by Harris Interactive, released today, captured a broad range of user attitudes and behaviors toward mobile phones and mobile advertising. The survey polled just over 4,000 adults in the US. Among other things, it confirmed that more people own mobile phones than landlines and that users were most receptive to the equivalent of paid-search ads vs. other types of mobile advertising. See also:

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Paid Search & Contextual
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Free Tool For Back-Of-The-Napkin Paid Search Forecasting - Forecasting is a delicate process which demands care. When prospective new clients ask our agency to build 12 month PPC projections, we often shudder. It isn’t that building forecasts is technically or theoretically difficult: stir reasonable monthly estimates of term-level click volumes and click costs into reasonable estimates of site conversion, bake at 350 degrees, and you have a tasty paid search sales and cost forecast.

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Privacy & Security
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European Union To Question Data Retention Policies Of Other Search Engines - The European Union will expand their investigation beyond just Google and investigate other search engine providers data retention policies. See also:

Google Responds To EU: Cutting Raw Log Retention Time; Reconsidering Cookie Expiration

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Searching
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This July: Try Google-Free Fridays! - In July, each Friday, Search Engine Land is encouraging everyone to try a search engine other than Google. Understand that this is most definitely NOT motivated because Google is somehow now too big, too scary or bad in anyway. Instead, we were inspired by the "Day Without Google" effort in June to open people's eyes to other services. That effort fizzled for a few reasons. See also:

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Search Marketing Industry
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The Big SMX Advanced 2007 Wrap-Up - I had a great time doing our first conference, SMX Advanced, last week in Seattle. Tons of coverage came out of the show, while the attendees learned a lot, had fun networking and enjoyed some good food. Need to remember what happened? Want to hear about what you missed? Here's a big, giant huge list of links. Plus, you'll find links to where people have tagged photos and stories, as well. See also:

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SEO & SEM
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Keep The Faith When The Algo Changes - One common mistake I've seen SEOs make since the dawn of search engines is tweaking their pages every time a change in ranking occurs. This is partially due to the fact that SEOs are notorious for mixing up cause and effect. Rankings for any given keyword phrase change constantly due to a variety of factors. These include algo changes, different data centers being queried, geo-targeted searches, personalized search, gaining or losing an authoritative link, and much more. It's a big mistake to assume that your rankings loss (or gain) had anything to do with something you've specifically done on the page itself. More likely than not, your rankings would have changed irregardless of anything you did on your site. See also:

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Social Media
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How To Convince Giant Corporations To Embrace Social Media - During the "Better Ways" panel last week at SMX someone in the audience asked for advice on convincing big corporations to embrace social media marketing. At the time my answer was that there would be a lot of education involved and you should also let them know that you'll be actively monitoring their reputation to make sure it doesn't get out of control. This was a great question. After thinking about this question and reflecting back on the obstacles our agency has had to overcome I have come up with a few more ideas on how you can convince your clients they need social media. See also:

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Video & Image Search
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Podzinger Is Now EveryZing - Following in the recent footsteps of Technorati, which morphed into a multi-media search engine, podcast search engine Podzinger has added video and rebranded itself EveryZing, a stronger and (paradoxically) less confusing brand. Google introduced video into Google.com results with the roll out of Universal Search and the new Ask3D prominently features video (search provided by Blinkx). See also:

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Wikipedia
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What To Do When Your Company Wikipedia Page Goes Bad - It happens to many companies: their Wikipedia page evolves and starts reporting bad stats, inaccuracies, legal stories you thought were water under the bridge and more. Wikipedia is a web 2.0 success story, and almost always ranks on page one in Google search results for your brand. Anyone can make changes, and there is little you can do to keep the public from adding, expanding and telling your story, their way. While you can’t make it disappear, you there are things you can do to mitigate the visibility of any negative content on your company’s Wikipedia page.

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Yahoo: Acquisitions
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Yahoo May Buy MySpace For 25% Stock Swap - The Times Of London reports that News Corp is interested in handing over MySpace to Yahoo in exchange for 25% of Yahoo's stock. Such a deal would value MySpace, the very popular social networking and video site, at about $12 billion. See also:

Yahoo Acquires College Sports Site, Rivals.com

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Yahoo: Business Issues
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Yahoo's CEO, Terry Semel, To Be Replaced By Jerry Yang - Terry Semel has stepped down as Yahoo's CEO. The new CEO is Yahoo's co-founder, Jerry Yang. With this change, Susan Decker, former executive vice president and head of Advertiser and Publisher Group, is now president. See also:

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Yahoo: Images
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Yahoo Images Gains Flickr Photos - Yahoo Image Search now contains photos from Yahoo's Flickr photo sharing service, ironically catching Yahoo up to Google, Microsoft and Ask.com -- all of which already included Flickr photos in their respective image search engines. Yahoo blogged about the change:

The Users Are Revolting At Flickr & Elsewhere

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Yahoo: Paid Search
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Yahoo Search Marketing Adds New Keyword Tool & More Features To Panama - Yahoo will be launching new features within Panama today. The features include: An improved keyword selector tool giving you an estimate of the monthly searches. An easy way to move and copy keywords from one ad group to another. See also:

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Yahoo: Mobile
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Yahoo Go Comes Out Of Beta With Big Global Push - Yahoo Go 2.0 and related mobile oneSearch offerings are coming out of beta this Friday and going into "general availability" in the U.S. While consumers pay no attention to these distinctions -- alpha, beta, gamma and so on -- it signals Yahoo's confidence in the product. Simultaneously, nation-specific versions of Go will be released in 13 countries, including Canada, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, Spain, United Kingdom, Thailand and Vietnam.

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Fun Stuff & Other Things
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Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, Intel & Others Join Greener Computing Effort - Google announced that it and many other computer and Internet heavyweights have joined together in the global Climate Savers computing initiative launched by the World Wildlife Federation. The idea is to improve the efficiency of computer hardware and data centers so that they require less power and give off less heat. See also:

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